Denver church location of Spanish Church of God in 1979. (Google Street View Screenshot)

In 1979, Martha Guzman, 19, was an active member of the Spanish Church of God at 3401 Bryant St. who had been attending the church for about 2 1/2 years. She was appointed as a committee member of a youth group that met on Thursdays.

Guzman, then a senior at West High School, had just been elected president of a church committee and spent much of her time volunteering there. Some classmates teased her because of how devoted she was to the church.

It was one of the reasons she had arguments with her mother, according to one news report.

Martha was so eager to go to a youth church service on Oct. 25, 1979, that she arrived early, between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., or about two hours before the church service was to begin.

Gary Sturgill, who lived a few blocks away, would later recall that he saw a girl walk in front of his home at 5:05 p.m. and enter the church through a side door. He lost sight of her and again saw her talking to a man at the same side door.

Sturgill had estimated that the man was about 5-foot-10 and weighed more than 200 pounds. Sturgill walked over closer to the pair until he was about 10 feet away — close enough for him to realize that the girl didn’t seem to know the man, who was wearing a red T-shirt and dark pants.

Dan Rosenblath also lived near the church, in a home that was diagonally across the street. That evening he took a walk to the Safeway store on 38th Avenue.

He saw a man with a Doberman Pinscher walking on the north sidewalk of 34th Avenue, coming from the west and approach a young woman who was at the east door of the church. Rosenblath would later recall immediately thinking something was wrong. It was “trouble.”

Rosenblath described the young woman as a small, very attractive girl wearing a purple dress. The girl was trying to go into the east door of the church.

He stared at them for some time. It appeared that they were in conversation. Rosenblath also noted that the girl didn’t scream out. It appeared the young man was helping her out and that she didn’t seem concerned.

Martha let herself into the church with her own key, possibly to pray and catch up on volunteer work.

Someone saw her enter the church and attacked her. Martha was only 4-feet-9 inches tall and weighed 97 pounds.

Side entrance of Spanish Church of God. (Google Street View image)

Nevertheless, the small woman put up a ferocious fight demonstrated by the condition of the sanctuary. Articles from the altar had been thrown about. Furniture had been overturned. Martha’s torn and bloody clothing was found scattered on the floor.

At 6:45 p.m. that evening, the church’s pastor and his two teenage sons and a nephew arrived at the church.

They discovered Martha lying nude in front of the altar. She was unconscious.

There was blood all over her. She had been stabbed in the abdomen. Her face was bruised and cut, indicating that her attacker had pummeled her in the face.

The assailant had apparently struck her with the wooden handle of a collection plate that was discovered near her body. The handle had been broken away from the collection plate, possibly indicating that her attacker had smashed it over her head.

The pastor, the Rev. Albert Barela, knew the young women well, but her face was so swollen that he didn’t recognize who she was.

Barela immediately called for an ambulance and police. He cancelled the youth meeting.

The young woman was still alive but in a coma. She was rushed to Denver Health Medical Center, which was then called Denver General Hospital.

Crime scene investigators took photographs of the chapel and took measurements between pieces of evidence and where Martha’s body had been found.

There were other signs of a violent struggle. Martha’s clothes had been ripped off of her body.

Articles written in The Denver Post at the time did not indicate whether the woman had been sexually assaulted. But a coroner’s report indicated that her killer had sexually assaulted Martha in the vagina and anus. Dr. Robert Deters of the coroner’s office wrote that the cause of death was extensive brain damage “from blunt force trauma to the head.”

Martha had also hemorrhaged in the neck indicating that she had been strangled, even though the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage were intact.

Denver police collected blood from the scene. At the time blood typing was used to help identify suspects but its effectiveness was limited. It was nothing like DNA sampling that could point to only one suspect.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.